


Four Corners

by Physionomiste



Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-06-27
Updated: 2012-07-12
Packaged: 2017-11-08 16:12:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,790
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/445026
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Physionomiste/pseuds/Physionomiste
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For every part of her, there’s another side, another corresponding factor that composes the whole. She is a study in four, a canvas of prefixes, undrawn until he fills in the blank spots. <i>An examination based on the four temperaments.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Melancholic

_What does she know of fear?_

Or what does she know of everything else? Breathing hurt, because she could feel the pull of rib-lung-skeleton, because she could feel herself—this is what she is, what she was, and what she will be. Each movement ordained the next; perhaps that was why she could go. Perhaps that was why she could go on.

Her fingers burned numb with relief. She wondered if the rest of her would follow suit, one big logical procession of not feeling, not breathing, not seeing. In her mind’s eye, she could only replay the events, fresh and hateful, and a little sad.

She cried for him, she thought. But daughters will cry over their fathers.

When they took him away, she had refused to say a word. She’d been too much of a coward to bring sound to her tongue, to taste the sentences and the phrases that she might have said. There were words to take back and other words to replace them with, but she knew the inevitability. Her father was not the same, and he never had been.

It should have been days now, but it’d only been minutes and hours after she climbed from her father’s creation. The mecha tank, hollow but spitting with spark and fuel, had housed her for those brief seconds. There were glass shards in her hair, and setting her legs to the floor had sent her stumbling to her knees.

The memory was not blissful. It was continuous, sitting in the cavern of her breast, intrinsic—first, of slipping fingertips into that black, electrified glove. Second, of hurtling through space and the volts, and the crumple of her father’s body. He was limp then, as limp as her mother had been. Asami did not know if she could eviscerate it. She did not know if she could forget.

And third? Was there a third? She had stopped enumerating. She had made him limp and vulnerable again, but perhaps it had been the last time.

 

////

 

It was colder here, outside, where everyone was not.

As much as her bones would complain, she had already known that. Weariness could not settle itself before the chill. Katara would make her return, but she was stubborn.

She clung to the edge of the edifice, her back adhering to brick and mortar and the solidity of an object that wouldn’t go away. That was the laugh of it, the brutal jest—everything in Asami Sato’s life went away. If she had the patience, she would detail the loss: accounting for them, filing them, storing them with the rest of her errors. Her treasure trove of sentiment would be rich with begotten misery.

But she would not scream. She would not cry. They would hear her, and what then?

They could not understand the depth of it. They would not begin to comprehend the way of it—the nature of things, to push, to pull, to ebb, and finally, to flow. She had held in her misgivings, grieved in private, and gave them the smile, as if she could not be courageous enough to find comfort in those who offered. She was a coward in all ways, and it made her spiteful that nothing was easy enough. It had been _easy enough_ before she had known the wickedness of her father. Before she had realized that she wasn’t what Mako needed. Before she realized that, finally, she was only _there_.

It had not hurt as much as she had thought it could hurt. To hurt was a strange mechanism, a gear-change in the torso, a loud and voracious twisting that spent and collided. Hurting was breathless. Hurting was the start of healing, but how was Asami to know the motions? The directions to recover were not a simple set of instructions, scrawled so neatly in the mind’s eye that she could come crawling with the ambitious need to make it feel better.

Better to forget. Better to go. They had no need for her, because it was over. Everything had its expiration, and her own time had transpired—the city was in ruins, but so was she.

It was over before it had begun.

 

////

 

General Iroh had not been there. With them, with the rest. He had helped, too. But she was unsure of what she had been expecting, or why she had been expecting him at all. There had been an eloquence in him—a graceful assemblage of limb and ligament. An amalgamation of a world she had grown up in: finery, decorum, civility. Perhaps it had jarred her that someone like him, someone who had been brought up in an environment as similar as hers, would not shy from the fight.

She was the very same, so why should she have been startled at all?

He had felt warm, or his voice had that quality of radiant heat. It had settled in her, reassuring, and she had smiled at him, in spite of that gnawing fear. For as much as she appeared unfazed, the bravery was a front of sorts, a circumscribed wall of confidence that masked the seed of worry. Who would ever prepare daddy’s girl to go against her daddy? That was the crux of it: that she was wholly unprepared, that she wasn’t sure of what she would do or how she should do it.

And he was calm. He was so sure of himself. She had watched him with envy, jealous that this man should know what to do when she had no idea at all.

Asami Sato was proud, and maybe that had been the worst of it. But when the smoke had cleared, when she had the time to breathe, it had seemed empty without his assertive presence. She had not wanted to dwell, but the afterthought lingered with question. Why did she care at all? She had known and spoke to him in parentheses—their fingers had hardly touched. Their eyes had met for seconds.

And yet—

“You’re blushing.”

She looked up, faltered, and shook her head, resolutely. She would not react—no fingers to reach up, to press her palms against her cheeks. “It’s just the cold,” she dismissed, because it was half the truth. She was cold and hot and all the in-betweens; hues and tones that coalesced into a gray of uncertainty. She was uncertain of Iroh.

But Bolin was persistent and perceptive. He gave her a glance, mouth parted with an addition for riposte, wanting, maybe, to replenish the smile on her lips. Wanting, maybe, to say otherwise. Instead, he said nothing at all, only understanding, only nodding, because he was Bolin, and listened for the things that slid between the cracks.

He was a friend in the most definitive sense. She was grateful for that.

 

////

 

She could hear the water muddying by the shore, coming and closing. The tide was well-worn. They had returned to Air Temple Island the night prior—exhausted, weary, but hopeful. She had nothing else to go back to, so she came with, unsure of her proper place, unsure of what was next for her. Perhaps those companions, who had kept her back unscathed throughout the hardships, would never think of her as the outsider, but who was to claim that truth? She had concluded so much on her own, as insecure as the next, as alone as the next.

It had been like this before. She would have been a fool to say that there were others who were waiting for her. The mansion would continue, lifeless. The servants would be beckoned by no one. Her father sat in prison, while she sat, underneath stars and sun, waiting for the next adventure—if there would be a next.

She would worry no more, because there was nothing to worry over. They would revel, they would celebrate, and she would forgive and let go. Hurting was transient.

Water rippled. She looked out, far ahead, and listened for silence, as if there would be anything else in the wind. She had been taught to expect nothing, to prepare for everything.

There were footsteps behind her, but she might not have heard them. Soft. Sinking. She settled on that distant skyline instead, watching for the unknown. It could have been Korra, she reasoned. It could have been Bolin, or Mako, or even Meelo, who had sworn to profess his devotion since their arrival. She started to smile, pasting it when it didn’t require the effort, and turned.

Pausing, paralyzing. Her smile warped into a gentle circle. Somehow, she had failed to account for _him_.

“General Iroh,” she supplied, amending all the other things she would have said. The utterance of his name fortified her, but it could not provide the rest of it. She eased herself into another smile, uneasy but evident. Her hands folded together, her head bowed gently. This was how her mother had taught her. This was how she presented herself, in separate parts instead of her whole. She felt frustrated that she should seek the routine, that she should recede to that demure, pretty picture of Asami Sato. She had fought along his side, but there were manners to consider. He was a prince, and she was not.

“Miss Sato,” he mirrored—a greeting of obligations. They had exchanged names; the opportunity for more hovered between them. But what was the “more” that she wanted?

 _Nothing. I want nothing_.

The endless negation of object, of that concretion in her hands rang clarion. She was sick of having her desires thrust into her open arms, as if her privilege trumped the rest. She could rebuild herself, by herself.

“A fine night,” he commented, contributing to shallow talk. All conversations devolved to the mundane, as it appeared. Was she so plaintive that there was nothing to speak of? That she should entertain the quotidian as topics of speech? An impatient flare snagged through her, a vicious skein of something untouched.

How could she react like so? This was Iroh, who had helped her and her friends. Iroh, who knew nothing of her. They were dancing formalities, and this was the protocol. She spoke a sigh, urged a grin. “A better night, now that Amon isn’t a threat,” she proposed, as pleasant as she could. She was reaching for something, searching, wanting to steer into brighter waters, into hotter—boiling. Instead, they were wading in tepid tides, trading futilities until the dust of their broken city came to rest.

There was that hesitation, of the slightest intake of his breath. An inhalation. She heard it, and wanted to interrupt, to blurt something else that would make him laugh. The impulse wound down, then inward, compelling her to dismantle the charade—

“Yes, he’s gone. We’ve locked up the rest of his lackeys. Hiroshi Sato, as well. It’s a good thing we have him in custody—who knows what else he could be capable of.”

The breath was stolen from her lungs as she watched him, or a piece of him, best as she could. She focused on his ear, lest her eyes stray too close to that sorry intent in his face. She hooked palms to the sprawl of skin above her elbows, hauling herself close and closer. “Good, I’m glad,” she murmured, because it was the most she could breathe. Her father’s name incited something cold and peculiar in her torso; remorse curled through her, bringing her to moments and rips of time that she had thought she’d managed to inter.

“I’m glad my father can’t do any more wrong.” _Everything, exhumed_.

A flurry of movement marked the step backward, the sharp exhale that came with mistake. She was burning, but she didn’t know why. Her eyes tracked his, and she saw the apology there, saw the regret. This was not something she would hold against him, but the thought of it soothed and assuaged. He was considering. She was considering, too.

“I spoke out of turn, Miss Sato. I—I don’t quite think things through,” he admitted, worrying the back of his head with an embarrassed hand. She could do no more but tilt the edges of her lips, to spare him with that slight upward tremble. “I think too much of what goes right, instead of what goes wrong. I’m sorry for the offense.”

She registered the elocution, but saw no else but the open and close of his mouth, muttering antiquity and beautiful motions. She shook her head, because the refusal of things kept her safe. Because the refutation would save her. She would not think of it—of her father, withering in restraints, because she could not show the vulnerability. It would be too much, not enough; overflowing, running, spilling.

“It’s fine,” she intoned—turning, needing to face something else but him. He was decorated and vibrant, filling their gap, saying things he shouldn’t. He was too large and too lively, colored by an energy she could not name. She glanced; a mistake. “It wasn’t your intention.”

“But a mistake all the same,” he replied, coming closer when she didn’t want him to. He was imposing, infringing, but she was not denying the approach. Would he touch her, she thought, a wild thought, a visceral thought. But foolish. Her face shifted, imperceptible, pausing as she looked to him from the periphery of her eyelash canopy. Underneath the light, the angles had given way to lengths and strips of dark shadows, coloring him with sooty indignation. He was marble, chisel-straight, and if she deigned to inspect, he would cut her.

She felt herself shrug. It was her defense, to claim indifference when there was turmoil. “He didn’t seem like my father anymore. He changed. It was not out of line,” she dismissed. And that would signal the end of it.

The loop did not want to close. It would never be easy or simplistic, but jagged. “But how much change is too much?” He was infinite, and infinitely close, with an arm to span the ellipses between their shoulders. He was asking enough, asking more than she had thought he could. She heard him breathe before he slipped a sigh, world-weary as her, as distraught and sick as her. How could he relate, when his hand had never been raised against his own flesh and blood?

“Enough to betray.”

Telling silence. She could hear an echo colliding with the break of the horizon—where the sun had shuddered its last bleak light. She inherited those dull washes of moonlight, covering her hands in ordinary. Iroh was pausing, as if to mull. But the words were clear and succinct, and they were true.

“I don’t think it was a betrayal,” he corrected, meaning to override and render obsolete. He had his manner of accomplishing; regimental and structured, line by line, to replace and to build with each encroach. She swallowed her throat shut. She didn’t want his pity.

“My father did,” she clipped, bending down to retrieve the stones at her feet. She wanted him to stop—to turn around and leave her, to return to whatever duty he had, to the rest of his responsibilities. She was not someone to feel sorry for, not an object of sorrow for his fretting.

She tossed the rock. It plucked at the water, testing, before surrendering to the vast swell. _Plop_ , it sang. As immoveable, as heavy as her.

He snarled his fingers into her palm, wrenching the sister stone from her grip, reconfiguring their inhibitions, upsetting their boundaries. She tore her gaze to him, mouth open for a retort, but he was already sending that filament across the shore, skipping it for her internal count. Her ribcage could not contain the thwarting heart, panicking to that rhythmic metronome across the water—one, two, three, four.

“Maybe, Miss Sato, you should consider that you could have been the one who changed.”

He parted on the last of his words. Leaving, he took his footsteps back into the brush, back into the hillock and the mundane. She listened for him until she could listen no more, coming up with the empty pour of what had been before him. The quiet and her absolution. She was alone again, with a hand for no one.

But his fingertips had not been cold against her flesh, but warm and _there_.


	2. Choleric

He’d met her weeks ago in the shuddering walls of a hideaway, patched and healed underneath the concern of Korra’s waterbending. He’d been shirtless and hurt, half in pain, but he could still watch her through the bleary slits in his eyes. He had said very little to her, and she to him.

It had seemed that silence served them both well. She had went her separate ways, adhering herself to the caravan of the Avatar. He remembered very little and too much: spools of hair, tumbling down her back, while the smile was worn with secrecy. She had laid her hands on his waist, very briefly.

Perhaps the phenomenon was easily explained—that she was quite pretty, and that he was attracted. But Iroh did not think of Asami Sato as much as he might have, because he was too restless, too busy, overseeing the rebuilding of their city. Because he was the general, who fielded the complaints, who saw to rehabilitation, who needed to address the rest of the worries. He had no time for fancies. He had no time telling Ms. Sato that she should not feel sorry, or guilty, or any other incriminating emotion.

There were certain liberties he had taken that one night, by the frill of the water. He had laid his hand in hers, and though it was not a nestling of palms, their skin had touched. He had wanted her to be cold, for she had seemed like it. Standing ashore, perched as if she were either regretting or forgetting, she stood frigid enough to appear as crystal. There’d been an impulse to say something worthy to her, to turn her sad eyes away.

It was in his blood, really. To fix. To mend those porcelain cracks anew.

His words had been fraught with too much assumption, as if he knew the intricacies of Ms. Sato. Threading, like tree branches—both transparent and opaque. She was an open book, he thought, but he could only glean past the bloated cover. The pages that continued were stuck together, unable to be pried apart. For some reason, Iroh wanted to try. There was an unspeakable challenge somewhere, lurking beneath that exterior of hers.

All was not well. He was puzzled.

 

////

 

Sooner or later, they should have crossed paths, but they hadn’t. He had been anticipating her, waiting for her appearance at each turn he made. It was hopeful thinking that made him blind with expectation; she would not round the bend, as if there had been fate stuck to the soles of her feet. Even so, he assumed Hiroshi Sato’s daughter would not want to remain in a city that reminded her of him. The cars were everywhere—the damage from the rest of his manufactures, omnipresent.

He had conducted multiple visits to the Air Temple, thinking that she might have been there, too. Greeted only by Tenzin, his fleet of children, and a cursory nod from the Avatar, he had been disappointed by the lack of her appearance.

Curious—he was curious of her. But she was nowhere to be found.

But over the days, he had let the intrigue quell. Over time, the inkling of Asami Sato faded, left as a smudge would on a windowpane. There, but hardly noticeable, and only when he peered very closely, could he identify it. With his attentions focused elsewhere, with meetings, with negotiations, he had pushed her obsoleting memory to a further corner. There had only been one reason to see her again, he had concluded—to apologize, for saying so much, for doing too much. It was his habit, of being the hero when no had asked.

 

////

 

Now loomed a week or so, gone so quickly that he had hardly noticed the shift in sunlight. He had buried himself beneath the mountain of promises, suffocated by his own hand. A meager movement touched at the right edge of his lip. He had not been home in ages, but that had been his decision.

The opulent office shone of gold and other gleaming artifacts. There was a stately looking portrait of his grandfather, hung valiantly on the wall ahead. Even now, their family upheld their own code of honor—in that flinty gaze, Zuko had said so much.

A door opened, creaking, hinges gone unoiled. Someone announced the presence of Chief Saikhan, sketching a formal gesture before pulling the portal closed. Iroh looked up, hands pinioned on either side of his desk. Garbed in black and gold, the Chief of Police approached him with neither a smile nor a frown.

“General,” he greeted, accentuated with a single nod of his head. Business undulated beneath the swells of their dual authority; there was something afoot, and he needed to know why.

“Chief. Good to see you. I wasn’t expecting a visit, but I’m sure you have news all the same.” Iroh extended a hand, received by the firm and gloved grip of the man before him. Gesturing to a nearby armchair, he seated himself as he waited for the chief to elaborate on proceedings. There would be good reason for Saikhan to show on his doorstep.

“It’s about the Equalists, sir.”

“I’m well aware that the sentiment still remains,” he responded, brow beetling. The leader of the movement may have betrayed them, but the issue was not irrelevant. The stirrings of resentment would remain in spite of the circumstances.

The chief charged onward. “It’s Sato.”

Fleeting, unnoticeable, something crossed on his expression. Iroh said nothing for the space of two seconds, waiting, perhaps, for more to come. But he was holding his breath, and his chest felt heavy with an unnamable reckoning. “What about him?” he inquired, nonchalant as possible. He thought not of the man, but of his daughter, dark-haired and dark-eyed, waiting by the water.

“He’s unwilling to talk. He supported the cause, of course, gave Amon all that machinery. But I think there’s more to him. He might have had another agenda, but it’s difficult to tell. He just won’t speak.”

Waiting for Saikhan to continue, he took a pen, rolling the cylindrical casing between his fingers. Where was this leading to? Why was he being involved?

“We think that he might be more willing if we could persuade him. There’s his daughter, you know.”

He did know—and knowing had his gut twisting. He was unsure. He was unconvinced that she mattered. Lifting his gaze to the chief, he shook his head. “That won’t work. She’s estranged from him. She worked with the Avatar and went against him at every turn she could.”

“Perhaps they won’t talk to each other. But the Equalist factory—“

“Surely anything that could’ve been found has been by now.” He’d read the extensive reports, the catalogues of names. They had found no more but the immodest inventory of Equalist objects, both machine and garment alike. Anyone who had been present in the factory had been rounded up, detained, and questioned. There should have been no reason for supplementing suspicion to be targeted at the already-searched underground factory.

Saikhan pursed his mouth—contemplating, or wondering how to refute the general. “Be that is it may, we should be prudent and check again. To make sure. Perhaps the Sato girl could be of use.”

“But you read the document. She denied knowing of its existence.”

“Certainly this would not be the first time a daughter has protected her father.”

Iroh gave a sharp, considering glance to the chief. “I hardly think this is an appropriate plan to go through with.”

“We have to exhaust all options, General. She seems the next best one.”

“If you’re so intent on pursuing this, then why are you asking me?” He would ask questions that he knew the answer to. Looking away, his hands rendered the pen in small fidgets.

There was careful silence, a clearing of a throat. The chair might have scraped backwards on his woodworked floors, leaving a singular crease on the boards. Infinitesimal, but merely there. “You worked with her, if I recall?”

_Briefly_ —like her hands at his waist, butterfly-light. He steadied a breath. “If that’s the only qualification, why not ask the Avatar? Or the rest of her group.” With deliberation, he replaced the pen that had been twirling at his fingertips. He was distracted with the possibility, of his knuckles rapping softly on the gilt at her door.

“That is at your discretion, General, if you decide to investigate. I only thought it was wise to mention it.”

“Of course. Thank you for bringing it to my attention.”

Saikhan left him some minutes later, declaring his departure with the professional flourish of a man who’d done it too many times before. The door opened and closed, clicking into finality. He waited for something else, for a reappearance, a disturbance at the entrance, but there came none. He would be distracted by those words, by the unspoken invitation that had not been freely extended to him.

She would reveal nothing, because she had no information of her father’s machinations. But the excuse of it could not quite halt the insistence at his chest—urging him, fanatically, to go to her.

And so he would, because he never quite mastered the art of thinking before doing.

 

////

 

Iroh’s hand hesitated over the clutch. The estate billowed in lavish scales before him, a monument of metal and chrome and defiant architecture. He pulled his vehicle to a stop, settling it into the quiet verbosity of the neighborhood. There weren’t many neighbors to speak of, and so he could not shift his eyes left and right, to see if anybody lurked by their shaded windows.

He cast a leg by the other, hefting himself out from the car. There were no gates, but a tri-layer fortress, flanked by staircases and the temerity to ascend. He did not know if she would even be here, mistress of the castle, lady of the estate. He had so many names for her, but it was more comfortable than to say the most important one in his head.

What would he say? He had no working plan, no lines to fall back on. Perspiration beaded between his crevices, sticking to spaces as he worked his way up the marble, putting footstep over footstep. She loomed closer, the concept of her, willow’s lines and raven’s wing hair. He could hardly remember the exactitude of her features, only conjuring the parts that could be distinguished once, piecing her together on his canvas.

There: the back of his hand running sharply against the door before coming up to wipe at his temples. Be home, he thought. Be here. He had not ascended those uncountable steps to return empty-handed.

For a long while, he waited at her doorstep, willing for there to be a crack, a gentle switch of the port. But there were no disturbances except for the impatient scrapes of his feet, running the bottoms of his boots along the stony exterior. He felt supremely foolish, though he could not quite discern the why of it. He would commit a million mistakes before he would come to face her.

Restless, he turned, going the way he came, retracing those wasted steps. It’d been on a whim, to come here, following the pithy advice of Saikhan. The chief knew nothing of Asami, but neither did he—Iroh, the second, who needed and wanted to be something he could not yet identify. There was no explanation for the itch in him, as if he had been progressively tilting to her axis, as if the meaningless hours that had transpired between them had fell into figuration. He was sighing, sighing for the unexplained, weary of the back and the forth. Tired of trying to sort the mess of it: why Asami Sato? Why did she matter at all?

He told himself she didn’t, but he could feel the lie, propagating on his tongue.

It was then that he chanced on the filmy smell, sweetened gasoline, filtering in the orchard-likeness of the Sato lands. Iroh shook himself from his coat, draping fabric over an arm as he walked the several feet to the railing, eyes trained through the heavy patch of greenery that set a distance from the manse and the rest of the property. Odd, that he hadn’t heard the noises before: the rumble, the screech, and the erratic circulation of a mobile.

He ran to the source, descending the staircase that brought him to the backyard. There were no whereabouts but his own, tracking slight footprints over moss before meeting the hard planes of gravel. Here, too, was decorated with the thoughtful style of the overtly rich, with columns standing in polite formations, as if these were proving grounds for a perpetual banquet.

A tire squealed on dirt. He rushed underneath the swinging plants ahead of him, hanging like pendants on the edge of the connecting trellis, intrepid as a rickety portcullis. He was no longer running, but walking smoothly toward the destination, curious and all the more wary of his lone investigation. Who was here if no one had greeted him by the door?

Reaching the perimeter of the racetrack, he felt his jaw slacken in surprise. A tidy mobile whirled around the dry, dirt-bedecked oval, so fast and reckless that he could hardly see the individual within. Enclosed by a fence, he merely climbed over it, clambering over the links and wooden supports to thump faintly on the other side. He crept ever closer, straining to identify the driver who drove without virtue.

He saw it, then, the vehicle keening into sight, racing across the parallel of this track. There was no manner of caution, only a breathless sort of continuation, hurrying downward with an impressive smog trailing fast and free. Standing, removed, he only observed with the intrigue of one who had never been behind such an entertaining wheel. He had done stupid things before, unconscionable things—dismantling planes, setting fire to vessels, but never participating in such simple pleasures as tracing routes at high speeds.

At halfway, he thought he caught that plastic sheen of the helmet, and yet it was too dark, too opaque, to glimpse the occupant. For as long as he stood, he made no movements to cross his arms over his head, or to stand by the raceway, gesticulating for attention. He was a bystander—for once, it would seem, casting pedestrian interest in the engineering of parts and velocity.

Then came the whip of air, flustering by and through him, meeting him perpendicular while the Satomobile accelerated past. There was a blur of gold enamel, here and then gone, advancing down the road to ignore him completely.

It was past time for the dithering, past time for an indulgence that served no clear purpose.  How clear it had been, that coming to her lands had been an error, forged by his own inability to be decisive. To him, she was another wounded one, a project that should not have been embarked on. His curse was low and blaspheming, and with a rough kick against the fence, he was prepared to leap over it, to regain his senses—to continue his duties, because this was not one of them.

But there was a churning behind him, an abatement of rotations that ebbed to a murmuring hush. He glanced backward to catch the vehicle rounding in opposite, reversing along the track, no longer so spirited, but controlled. Stopping some yards from his stationary position, the Satomobile came to a rest, cut off in the next instant. Iroh squinted, thrusting a flattened hand above his eyebrows, looking against the sun; the driver hopped from the seat, removing the helmet.

Hair cascaded. He watched, dumbstruck, as her features materialized. As her form started moving, coming to him, limbs and legs working in tandem as she floated over, her brows knit in concern. “General?” she asked, because she had not been expecting him.

He had not expected her, either.

“Ms. Sato,” he said, swallowing on the rising lump that came at the end of his address. He was suddenly nervous, and each explanation that he might’ve prepared abandoned him, leaving him deplete and deprived of eloquence. His eyes did not know where to land and settle; they fluttered, endlessly, on the separate pieces of her. To the clinging black fabric, encircling around her wrists and arms, her hips and her legs. To her gloves, to the fingers that peeked beneath, to the white flash of her neck, exposed, and to the curious, slightly alarmed expression on her face.

“I didn’t, that is, I know I’m trespassing—“

“No, it’s fine, General. This is just a surprise,” she responded, tucking the helmet beneath her arm. She had cocked her hip, just a bit, at an angle that carved a vee into the edge of her waist.

“Your door wasn’t open. I mean, no one answered the front door—when I rang, that is. I thought, perhaps, that you and the staff had left.” And he too, had begun to leave, disappointed.

Her eyes flicked nonchalantly toward the estate. “The staff is gone for the rest of the week. I needed time for myself, I suppose. And I’m not so dependent on such a fleet of people, really.”

He nodded, empathizing on some level. Even at the palace, he had thought the servitude too expansive, too grandiose. “But what if your attention was needed?”

Her gaze was pointed. “Then they would have wired a message. Besides, business concerns are sent to the corporate offices—“

“I’m not here for business,” he said. Had he pitched that utterance an octave too low? Had he been too brusque with its expression?

Red lips were pursed. She looked intrigued, but that’d only been his imagination. “Not business?”

“Not precisely. It’s—police. Police matters. The chief tasked me, that is—“ He was blundering over his sentences, unable to produce the brunt of it, the bulk of the matter. He looked away, then back, running his observations over that smooth cheek of hers. “It’s about your father.”

Something faded. She leaned back, nodding, holding her arms closer. He thought she had faltered, but no, it was only the shuttering of her eyes, giving way to a neutral acceptance. Her smile seemed pronounced, as if forced. She said, “I see.”

“If you aren’t ready to discuss—if you’d like me to leave—“

Her head shook. “It’s all right. I will help you however I can.”

 

////

 

Later, she saw to him in a sunlit room, with brocade curtains and an old settee, upholstered by damask. She had asked him for tea and he had obliged, because his tongue was dry, and because he liked tea as it was.

She handed him a cup. He thanked her graciously and bent to retrieve the porcelain, hand curling around the white skin of the body. Fingertips brushed fingertips. He looked at her, but her eyes were trained on the rim, careful not to spill. His pulse ratcheted.

He did not scald himself, but his lips were too busy playing at the bony edge of the dainty teacup to speak. It had struck him, sometime later, when she had led him through the leafy pathways back to her home, that she had not reacted to him by the raceway with alarm. She had merely tilted her head, curious, as if he did and did not belong there.

If there had been a way to look past her, he would have accommodated himself to the method by now. Behind her, however, was a door, oak-paneled and painstakingly carved with decorative notches. Ominously, it was closed, presenting him with its face and not the open candor of the rest of the estate. He had seen more stairs, more columns, and nary a soul. It was emptier, this place, than it had ever been. He wanted to know why a family of two would ever need the overabundance of space. But he was a hypocrite in the worst way; the palace breathed the same sort of loneliness. He could bottle the atmosphere, here, and compare its likeness to the vacant species of the royal archways.

He faced her. “Your father had a personal workshop.”

“Yes. It’s behind the estate,” she affirmed.

Iroh pressed onward. “When the Avatar and the retired chief conducted their investigation, they discovered an Equalist factory beneath the Sato lands?”

She hesitated. He examined the light curve of her eyelid. She was looking downward, palms crossed on her lap. She had eschewed her gloves some time ago. “I am sure you already know that, General.”

“I do.”

“Then why are you asking me what you already know?”

He took a breath, startled. The conversation dipped to a sullen trough. He did not know how to respond. “My apologies, Ms. Sato.”

Hers was a sigh. “No, please continue. It’s just that…” She drifted for that moment, curling her forefingers into one another. “Everything is about my father. Any time someone wants to talk to me, it’s about my father. I don’t—and I didn’t—know anything.”

“It’s a formality, but insensitive. I am sorry.”

“Go on, please.” She had made a noise—it was soft, perhaps trembling, like uneven stands of smoke. He had not wanted her to feel put off, but now he’d done so. He should kick himself. “I’ll help you, as I said I would.”

He wasn’t sure how he could continue from this, as if he’d spilled his tea, committed the faux pas, and would need to wait before the shame could evaporate. “Yes, the Equalist factory. That is… the chief of police, he’s unsure that everything was found.”

She hesitated. “But they’re metalbenders.”

“And the factory has walls made of pure platinum, which is ineffective to metalbenders. If your father is capable of that, then who knows what he might’ve hidden in there?”

He saw her pull back. An inch, a fraction of an inch. The movement, so slight, had still managed to dislodge a wisp of her hair from her ear. His hand fisted, trapping fingers that had their own ideas. Iroh bit his tongue.

“Are you sure of this?” she asked, after some time had came and gone. She had been thinking. He was unsure if this would be a good or bad indication of what came next.

He nodded. “Yes. I think it could be possible. I would have contacted the Avatar, but… I thought to come here, first.”

She had poured her own tea some minutes ago. He’d noticed the two sugars she had stirred into it. The dollop of cream. She had taken one sip and set the cup down on the varnished table, edging it up against a lace doily. Her hands had been set in her lap ever since. There were so many things he could see in her—so many things, unvoiced but there. Present. He wished to look for the ones that remained clandestine.

“Right, thank you.” Another pause. And then: “We… we should go look, then. I don’t want your time to be wasted here.”

He gaped. “Now? Ms. Sato, I was only wondering if you would permit an inspection—“

“Nonsense. You said this is important. We should go.” Now she was standing, looking at him from the above. She was a geometrician’s dream, of linear constructions and angular bends. He was at a loss for words; her eyes were blooming with confidence. She had arched her hip, arched her brow, and he was mesmerized with his mouth open.

_Idiot. You look like an idiot, staring at her like this._

The composure returned. Regal, authoritative. He smiled at her. “If you say so, Ms. Sato.”

“We are not strangers, General.”

“Then you can’t call me ‘General,’ either.”

Asami laughed, a sound that displaced him completely. He could not remove the gaze that he’d pinned her on; riveted, reverent. She did not seem so sad. She was by the door, moving away from him, opening it before peering over her shoulder. He was already straightening.

“Shall we go?”

He came to her, centimeters away. They’d been closer before, but it seemed different now. “After you, my lady.”

“It’s Asami.”

“I know.” He looked into her eyes, smiling.

They left the tea in their cups to grow cold.


End file.
